The Final Curtain
by The Exile
Summary: Garian and Carbon Garian are squaring up for their final battle.
1. Chapter 1

The Final Curtain

_'Around, around the sun we go: The moon goes round the earth. We do not die of death: We die of vertigo.' _- Archibald Macleish

It was incredibly disconcerting, hearing his own death screams coming from someone else's mouth.

What was even more wrong was the fact that he had felt so good afterwards. It was like a drink of strong coffee after several days without sleep. No, like truly living again after spending a week as a zombie. He had never realised how much vitality he had been missing for so long. The rush of life energy coursing like fire through his veins was pure ecstasy. He had to hide his face from Jack so the snakebird could not see the manic grin on his face. It was fortunate for him that the cowardly bird liked to hover so far above the ground while he watched Garian fight, so he would not inadvertently be hit. You can't even see the goddamn battle properly from up there, you stupid bird, thought Garian.

"Is something wrong?" asked Jack.

"Er... me? No, nothing wrong. I've been wounded, is all. Kinda hurts..."

"Garian, being wounded in battle is not 'nothing wrong'. Let me have a look."

"No!" Without thinking, Garian swiped at the annoying bird. It never worked; Jack deftly avoided the backhand smack with an indignant flourish of his feathers. Then his sinuous neck darted around and his expression became far, far more worried.

"We have ninety seconds to get off this island before it explodes!"

"WHAT?" Garian jumped to his feet and bolted towards the port, leaving the bird to flap manically to keep up with him. He swore repeatedly under his breath. Swore at Jack, at himself, at Bilan, at this goddamn island and that stupid piece of crap the Agency called a prison escort ship. He used every foul syllable to keep time as he ran, jumping over falling masonry or being bodily lifted by Jack over anything he couldn't jump over.

* * *

Somehow, he made it. Kay and Tracy were waiting for him at the harbor. They had brought him transport out of here. He thanked the Gods that it was them and not that goddamn ship.

"Garian..." began Kay.

"We need to leave NOW! Everyone on board!" warned Jack.

"Kay... I have a message from him." said Garian.

"Him?" asked Kay, confused.

" 'Let's meet in our dreams.' "

"I... think I understand. Thank you." Kay nodded. Then the two Lavian ninjas walked to their submarine. The other submarine was for him to escape on. He boarded it and it started off automatically.

He wondered where exactly it was programmed to take him. Not that it mattered. He stood on the observation rail and watched the island collapse piece by piece before sinking under the water, causing a massive tidal wave. It made him sad to know that such total destruction was a complete waste. He knew it was not enough to break through. No matter what he broke, it didn't matter shit when he was an entire day late. Had to be on time. Always had to be on time.

"Seriously now, who's 'him'?" asked Jack.

"None of your business, birdy." retorted Garian.

"Its okay, Garian, I understand. You were all embarrassed because you have a crush on that ninja girl, and your brain went all fuzzy and you just said any old bullshit."

Garian spluttered and blushed, "I... er..."

"You humans are so dumb sometimes. Its so much easier with birds. Me and Regina..."

"I'm going down to my cabin. I feel tired." And cold. So cold... the chill was biting. His blood was freezing. Cold as the grave... he knew he hadn't fully recovered, even with the energy of the Bilanium and all the life energy of his doppelgängers that he had slain. You couldn't cheat death forever. He had bought himself more time, though, maybe enough time for one last attempt.

"Sweet dreams." said Jack.

Garian turned his face to hide the unadulterated murderous look in his eyes.

He lay down on his bunk, shivering even with the covers pulled over him, stared at the ceiling and remembered. He just wanted to be alone with his own memories for a while longer.

-----

_He remembered jumping down after claiming his third prey by pushing him off the ledge into the Bilanium tank, and landing on the ledge below where that one had been. Hiding in the shadows, he had spotted another. He waited for the annoying bird to go scouting down the corridor, then he casually stepped out of the shadows and placed his blade against the man's throat._

"_Three down, three to go." he had whispered. The other Garian had whirled around, a satisfying look of horror on his face._

"_You're... me?"_

"_No scar, no bird." he shrugged, "You know, if you just shut up and die by my hand, it might trigger it, at least for you."_

"_Trigger what?"_

"_The way out." there was an almost reverent tone in his voice, "Or you want to help me find the true way out? Quickly, we do not have much time, we NEVER have much time! Do you remember a girl? A girl in your dreams?" _

_The other Garian nodded, a bemused look on his face. He lowered the blade and leaned across to whisper into the man's ear:_

"_When you go to sleep and wake up, you have to be on time, not late. On time. And then you'll meet her in person, but you'll have to save her. Except that you have to leave her to her fate. And then when you meet her sister..."_

"_What in hell are you on about? I'm not killing any girl or their sister!" _

_Whipping his blade out of his scabbard, the other Garian swung at him. He was not fast enough or strong enough. Not with the strength of three Garians already infusing his blood. His blade went through his hated double's chest with a satisfying crunch. The man fell and began coughing up blood._

_Garian knelt down to hear the final request pass through his adversary's bloodstained lips before he gasped his last breath. It was only courtesy, even though they all said the same thing. It sickened him. Why did they all ask for something they couldn't even avoid anyway?_

_---_

_He remembered the child. He honestly hadn't wanted to kill the child. It had been the only thing he could think of. The only action that deviated so much from his destiny, so utterly despicably wrong and out of character, so inherently damaging to everything around him, surely it would break the cycle. _

_It hadn't been the Jalapeno Juice that made him do it. Oh yes, he had been drunk, he had the flashbacks, an entire bottle of prison-brewed booze and post traumatic stress disorder was always a bad combination. It was the hour he had spent scratching at the stage wall, screaming, desperately trying to pry apart the planks of wood to reach the merciful darkness of the night after a day that never ended, that tantalising music he had never heard before, the eschatological gravity of the culmination of a thousand Universes he could almost reach out and touch. It was the fact that it didn't work, that it never worked. He had only stopped because Kurtliegen had somehow physically pried him away, dragged him outside and electrocuted him with his claw until he was sober. He let the Warden live. He always killed the warden and it never made a damn difference. Instead, he had pushed the man off him with a demonic strength and strode towards the prison entrance..._

-----

The cold was unbearable now. He couldn't feel his feet. He felt himself becoming dizzy. He ran a hand over the scar across his face. It had been a good idea, letting Garian attack his face in battle so that Jack couldn't tell the difference between them. Stupid bird. It hurt like hell now, though. It made him feel any sleepier. Shouldn't go to sleep when you're this cold...

_It doesn't matter any more. Tomorrow... yesterday I will wake up. I'll be the only one. They're all gone now. All of them. Maybe it'll be enough. Enough to break down the stage door. Break everything. Break out._

----

_((Disclaimer: Dying to Carbon Garian does not trigger Parallel Six, it is just a normal Game Over which is boring and wastes two hours. As far as I know, it is impossible to even get up onto the stage. I won't spoil for you the consequences of letting Kay die in Parallel 2._

_Dedicated to everyone else looking for Parallel Six: The Hunt for Parallel Six.))  
_


	2. Chapter 2

_Author's note: I'm not sure this actually works as a second chapter, I couldn't decide whether to write these as stand-alone stories or chapters of the same fic, please tell me which you think would work best. _

_This would not happen at the same time as chapter 1, it would be a second cycle of parallel 3/4._

_

* * *

_

"Holy shit, Jack, what did you do?"

"What did I do?" Jack flapped his wings, "Why does everyone always automatically assume everything's my fault? Spatiotemporal collapse... Jack's fault. Money missing out of the petty cash tin... Jack's fault. Blue feathers in the sink..."

"We don't have time for this!" Kaiser interrupted him, "There's a Pauli Factor Five paradox tearing apart the local space-time continuum! This whole Island is practically quantumly non-local! Do you have any information on what might have caused this?"

"I'm sorry... I have my hands full looking after Garian. He's been hit by the worst of this. We met his Doppelgänger, and now his cells are rapidly decaying."

"His... what? Oh great, this is worse than I thought."

"Any idea how to slow it down? You're the scientist, cmon, give me a little help here."

"Jack, I can't do science if I can't even record data."

"... you what?"

"The space-time continuum is too unstable. Its like by the time I've written something down, it hasn't happened any more. All the little events I use as a foothold have gone. Its driving me up the wall."

"Garian's not going to like this..."

"Looks like Garian's got worse things to worry about."

The blue bird craned its sinuous neck and spotted his pet bounty hunter, who had just barged through the door, screamed in agony, then collapsed face down on the floor.

"You didn't tell me his cells were decaying THAT fast!"

"Is it bad?"

"Unless a miracle happens, he's got an hour to live."

"Don't you just love these routine operations? Every time I get a day off..."

"I said he's got AN HOUR TO LIVE, Jack. Stop complaining and do something!"

Garian groaned and rubbed his head. The bird flew down and helped him stand up with strong, cybernetically reinforced talons. The bounty hunter's endurance was remarkable, to even be able to perform this feat. Jack knew how much the stubborn man could suppress pain. You never knew whether he was in trouble until it was too late. Jack sometimes wondered if even Garian knew he was in trouble, he could be so dumb.

"Who's got an hour to live?" Garian demanded, his voice still woozy. Jack explained the situation to him. He nodded, seeming to comprehend.

"No time to lose, then." he said, then ran out of the far door.

"GARIAN, MIND THE DROP!" Kaiser yelled after him.

"What drAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!" screamed Garian in the distance. The two birds ruffled their feathers at each other, an avian shrug.

"I do wish he'd stop wasting his Bounty Hunter Points."

"You'd better go and help him out. I'll scout around for some more information, okay?"

"How're you going to manage with no recording equipment?"

"I'll have to switch to manual. Typing is hard with a beak so its not gonna be readable, but... did you say there was a Doppelgänger?"

"At least one."

"This is beyond any occurrence I've ever had to investigate. A flux of this magnitude could well break through the threshold of this Island, whatever's been holding it here. It could affect global space-time, mess with the entire planet. If that happens... getting Garian off this island is the least of our problems."

* * *

"Code 8446. I repeat, Code 8446!"

Kay crouched down, unwilling to abandon her wary vigil of the environment even to listen to the message from Mission Control. Everything on this Island felt hostile – the people, prisoners, staff and visitors included, the uncertain ground, with its ledges protruding at odd angles from deadly swampland, even the way time passed felt somehow wrong, restrictive, as if to spend too much time here meant she would never leave. She didn't want to be in this place any more than her superiors wanted her to.

However, she had dreams about this place. Recurring dreams. The kind of dreams that never lied.

"I'm breaking up." she said in a faux panicked voice, shaking her communicator violently in an attempt to make the message sound choppy, "Can you hear me? I'm getting no reception... I'm sorry... what?... I'll try rebooting the system..."

Ignoring the message repeated over and over down the intercom, she threw the device in the swamp and continued walking through the swamp. In the distance, she could see the long grassy bank, one of the platforms that somehow refused to sink into the foul mire that was slowly pulling in and choking everything around it.

It was there that they would meet. She remembered it clearly now.

* * *

"Well, Garian is doing okay so far."

"His cell decay isn't stabilising. If anything, its more rapid now. Its only those sudden infusions of life energy keeping him alive. The space-time continuum is getting worse. The damage is showing up all around us. Just look at the state the Island is in. Have you seen any other Doppelgängers?"

Jack shook his head.

"Jack, don't you think that's a little odd?"

"What? Not really. What with it being logically impossible that there are any at all..."

"Garian... this other Garian... let's call him Carbon Garian, seeing as he was executed by Carbon Freeze... he arrives on the Island, kills the child, then Kurtliegen executes him. Then you two alive, you have your own encounters with the child and Kurtliegen, and all the other bystanders who saw the incident. They were affected differently, and they're all in different places doing different things now. Both sets of people have to exist at once, to satisfy both your timeline and the other one. So why aren't there two of them as well?"

"Aaargh, Kaiser, you're making my head spin. I told you about that once before!"

"Jack, quit complaining, this is important! If Carbon Garian arrived at the same time as Garian... but Carbon Garian was executed... he can't have had chance to kill Bilan!"

"... what?"

"Somewhere on this island... there could still be a Bilan!"

"Don't be an idiot! Have you ever seen the aftermath of a Bilan attack?"

"Its just a possibility I thought I should point out to you, Jack, no need to yell at me. I've been getting some readings consistent with Bilan's energy patterns... only very slight reading, mind you..."

"What's this about Bilan?" demanded Garian loudly. He had finally caught up with the birds after their long struggle through the graveyard.

"Oh, Garian, before I forget..." Jack caught the exasperated tone in his voice - Kaiser was used to relying on his recording equipment so much that the bird had difficulty remembering things for himself, especially the large volume of things he was expected to be able to remember as the Data Memory Bird, "Do you know this girl?"

"Girl?" repeated Garian. His eyes widened as, behind the black bird, a woman appeared from nowhere.

"I... sort of recognise her..." he blushed. He realised he was staring at her but couldn't help it. She was beyond beautiful, she was perfect. Her slim body... her golden hair...

"We were in each other's dreams." explained Kay, her azure eyes alight.

_So I do have nice dreams sometimes_, thought Garian.

* * *

Cogs turned, pulleys raised and the prison doors swung slowly open, then thudded ominously shut to bar light, life and hope once again, this time with an unintentional and unerring finality. Garian walked out and stared his Doppelganger straight in the eye. Eyes the same colour as his own, with many of the same emotions – confusion, rage, pain, desperation and a thirst for vengeance.

"Garian, the quantum decay has risen dramatically! This island is beginning to collapse in on itself!" Jack told him.

"Then I'd better finish this quickly." said Garian, "Can you get everyone out of here? Kay and Tracy too?"

"Lavian's dealt with it already. They have better technology than us, damn them..."

_Then there's no-one else left I need to protect_, thought Garian. _No other innocents whose life blood he can prey on. Nothing to come between our battle_. He drew his sword and advanced on his clone.

With a cruel smile, Carbon Garian mimicked his action exactly.

_So its really in motion, _thought Carbon Garian. I_ would have liked to fight it myself. One on one, not through the eyes of a captured enemy – the visuals are appalling. See my old enemy again, maybe finish the job. I'm still under contract, after all. But if that happened, in my weakened state, and in that powerful form its gotten hold of, I'd have no chance of winning. And I can't lose._

_Not now I have a chance..._

* * *

Through the portholes of the submarine, the two sisters sat and watched the plumes of smoke and clouds of ash that were once Jailer's Island recede into the distance, before being lost in the blue-green depths as they submerged, ready to brave the storm that would still separate the prison from the outside world, in life and death, forever.

"All those deaths..." breathed Tracy. She felt nauseous. They were prisoners, most of them sentenced to live on the world's toughest prison for unspeakable crimes, but they were still people, and in her dreams, some of them had even helped her, nursed her back to health when the Warden tortured her. And there were all the visitors, women and children... drowning was too terrible a death for anyone.

She looked over to her sister, who was silent, apart from strangely laboured breathing, her expression blank.

"Sister?" she called. No response. I_t must be harder on her than I realise, _thought Tracy. _She's always the older sister, the strong one, the one who can fight, she tries so hard to protect me that sometimes I can't see her pain at all. _It never ended well for her sister... when she didn't outright die, she still didn't meet her destined true love. Of course, it didn't hold up a candle to the dark furnace that she saw in the furthest depths of her own probability arc...

A shiver went down her spine. Almost the second she thought of that destiny, the destiny she was forbidden to speak of, even to think of, a premonition, a realisation, hit her with the force of a hurricane...

"Sister..." she said in a more urgent tone of voice.

"Yes?" Kay turned to look at her.

"You're not my sister."

Blue and green static fluxed and writhed as Kay's form shifted to reveal Bilan, a rippling mass of acidic slime and razor sharp chitin, gibbering incoherently. He barely fit in the cabin but looked perfectly capable of pouncing with perfect precision and killing her in a fraction of a second.

Tracy did not retreat. She drew her serrated knives. Her eyes were jet black, filled with the void, more terrible than monsters.

_A void that must not escape._

She had ninety seconds. Ninety seconds until they crossed the threshold of the Island.


	3. Chapter 3

_I understand now. Everything. And I remember everything..._

He felt the cold again. The cold darkness of the grave. And the voices. Nightmare voices, distorted, voices of his dearest friends and bitterest enemies alike, people he'd never met but felt he'd known all his life... Flickers in the corners of his eyes, like silhouettes of flames. Everything burning... stood on the burning deck of the ship... he jumps, trying to land behind his opponent and hit his unprotected back, but slips just as Bilan lunges forward... chitinous fangs bursting through his chest... searing pain... his last thoughts before sinking into the vortex of red mist and pain and darkness, thoughts that he didn't understand and he wasn't sure were even his own, I_ knew I couldn't beat him this time round, not on my own, not in the state I'm in..._

_Maybe I shouldn't have been so keen to be on time..._

_

* * *

_

His eyes snapped open and he bolted upright, blade already in hand. The darkness was lit by glaring spotlights. He was in a place tha he vaguely recognised, grim blue-black walls with guttering torches, except that this room was impossible. It was enclosed by an iron fence with no gate, and appeared to be floating in midair, halfway down a bottomless pit, a gaping eternity above and below him.

"Stupid dreams..." he growled.

"This isn't a dream. Well... its not one of the dreams you're thinking of. Not quite, anyway."

"What? Make sense, you..." Garian glared at the thing that had addressed him, the only other thing in the room. A yellow dwarf with coal-black eyes of menacing humour, it wore a blue baseball cap and carried maracas. He struggled for a word to describe it, "Were-banana?"

"Ah, so you've forgotten who I am. Maybe forgotten everything, this time round. Or maybe you're a completely new arc." the banana-thing pondered, somehow mocking him with that beak and round eyes of his, "I hope so. It would mean guessed correctly, and I was successful in separating this place off. However, it does mean this will take longer than I thought. But fear not, you have plenty of time. And plenty of incentive."

"I still have no clue what you're talking about. Jack, do you...?" the bounty hunter whirled around, peering at a spot just over his left shoulder, "Jack?"

"The bird can't follow you here." said the banana-thing.

"Where am I? I... last thing I remember, I was..."

"Dead." he replied, "That was real. You still are, in a way. And you'll just carry on being dead if you leave now. But this place doesn't quite follow the rules. You haven't broken the cycle yet, but you can work towards it. The first thing you need to do, is earn your Second Chance."

"Second Chance?"

"To redeem yourself. To understand what's going on before it all just happens over again until its too late. Because it is, you know. Almost too late."

"Oh... metaphysical stuff." Garian sighed, "I was hoping for a rematch with Bilan."

"Oh, there'll be plenty of battles. Real battles, too, where you can die for good, this time, if you lose, and if you win, you'll have to live with the consequences of who you kill."

Garian sounded a little more hopeful. Fights were something he understood. He gripped his sword hilt a little more firmly and went into a martial stance. He felt a little better now. Like whatever had been weighing upon him – the weird cold feeling, the lack of energy, the air of doom – was no longer present.

"Its harsh, I know, to make you fight as soon as you've woken up, but its necessary to fulfil some of the rules of the cycle. Some of this stuff was in place before I came here. I can't get around the rules entirely. You have it easy. You get to still be Garian. I have to be J.J."

"Heh, I'd fight anyone you want if you'd explain to me what the hell you're talking about." replied Garian, "Or, better yet, stopped saying vague bullshit that sounds suspiciously like you're insulting me."

"Oh, you'll understand in time." the beak mocked him again, After all, that's what this is all about."

* * *

_That was a long time ago._

_Musashi had been the first opponent. Musashi Morgensen, the other prisoner in the cage, the other survivor on board that boat. Musashi, who hadn't feared death._

_Then there had been Indigo, who saw destiny, sometimes, because he could stand outside of it._

_Bruno, the weretiger whose fighting spirit was as fierce as the animal he appeared as._

_Warden Kurtliegen, whose strength lay in being the master of his environment. He would have made a good Warden, had he just concentrated on the job in hand.  
_

_Bilan, his greatest enemy. An enemy who could stalk others across land and sea, capture and possess its prey. An enemy too much like himself. The enemy he could so easily become._

_DeBose, who lived again._

_Blade, who was a killing machine, with a body of steel and no remorse._

_Megan Rafael Lansky, angel of ultimate evil, the most dangerous prisoner on the Island, who laughed as she killed._

_Sean Gabriel Lansky, whose devotion to his sister was a cause he would never stop believing in. A thoroughly evil cause, but a true cause, nonetheless._

_M-Bilan, the one who sought absolute transcendence._

_They're all dead now._

_Dead by my hands._

_Everyone on this island is dying. Dying for good. I was about to die, too. When I wake up, I don't know if I'll be alive or dead. I don't know if I'll be on the boat, on the Island, still here, their blood on my blade, their corpses at my feet, or somewhere worse, that void that lay just on the borders of possibility.  
_

_I alone have a chance, though. I realise that. I had to be as good as them in order to defeat them in a one-on-one battle, with no aid, no rest, completely fair and even. They were all strong opponents. I've learned everything I can from fighting them, now._

_I know that when I fell to Bilan that day, on the boat, it was nothing I could avoid back then. There were things I didn't understand about what was happening when I boarded that boat that I do now._

_If anyone's going to survive all this, it'll be me._

_It had better be me._

_I'm the only one left._


End file.
